Christocentrism of Charism â€“ Buggert - CarmelStream

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human, divine or incarnate. This ahistorical view of Christ and the incarnation is, of course, due to the Hellenistic metaphysics of substance and accident. A being possesses the fullness of its being in its first moment of existence. Any changes which occur to the being thereafter are strictly "acciden- tal" modifications of the being but in no way affect the inner "nature" of the being. We will see that the New Testament takes quite a different view. Moreover, once one understands the incarnation as involving the human freedom of Jesus, then the history of Jesus becomes essential to understanding this incarnation. Sixth, and finally, the distinction and opposition between the human and the divine can itself lead to the impression that Jesus must somehow be "schizoid." How can one affirm at one and the same time of one and the same subject that it knows all and does not know all, is fully aware of its identity and is not fully aware of its identity? The fallacy here is to assume that the human and the divine of Jesus are in the first place antithetical and in the second place, belong to Jesus in the same way, i.e. both being his proper natures, as "being human" is proper to Peter or Mary. In his anthropological Christology Rahner wishes to surpass these many limitations of Neo- Chalcedonian Christology, a Christology which, though maintaining the genuine humanity of Jesus, could never do justice to the full historical humanity of Jesus and its importance for his being Son of God. Rahner wants a Christ who is not the big exception to the rule, a Christ who is truly human with a genuine human history and freedom, coming from within creation and history itself. Likewise he wishes to give us a unified Christ in whom the antithesis of the human and divine is resolved. His model of Christ will not be the two nature model of divine and human but the anthropological model of divine as human. The "and" and the "as" make all the difference. cxxvii To achieve his goal of a Jesus who is truly divine as human, Rahner opts for the thirteenth 26
century Franciscan theologian, John Duns Scotus, on the question of the motive of the incarnation. For Scotus, sin or no sin, there would have been the Christ, for in Christ God was to bring his creation to completion. Hence, Rahner will view Christ from the perspective of creation itself, i.e. as its goal and culmination, or as DeChardin says, its omega point. In this regard, Rahner's is a "New Adam" or "Eschatological Adam" Christology, i.e. Jesus is the crown of God's creation itself. In this "New Adam" Christology, Christ will not be explained so much "from above" as "from below," or "from within," i.e. in terms of proceeding from creation itself, and in fact creation understood as occurring in an evolutionary way, i.e. in terms of the evolutionary, historical and creative process itself. In this way Christ will not appear as the big "exception," but as the supreme exemplification or the supreme instance of what God is always doing everywhere in God's creative activity. Hence Rahner's Christology can also be called an "archetypal" Christology. Jesus is "exhibit A" of the human, the perfect model, the New Adam. After taking the above mentioned Scotistic option, Rahner then contextualizes his Christology within the framework of evolution. He points out that as any being emerges from within the evolutionary process, it stops being "what it had been" and is now "sublated" to a new and higher level of being. When matter evolves to life, it is no longer mere matter but living matter. In other words, at every stage of the evolutionary process the new reality which emerges has a limited potentiality for development. It has limits to its possibilities of becoming. It can itself become so much and no more. If it transcends its own being in its process of becoming, an evolutionary critical threshold has been crossed and it ceases to be what it had been. When in the evolutionary process animal became human, it ceased being just an animal and has become rational animal. In simple language, you can teach a dog so many tricks and no more. Once the dog learns the trick of saying "I 27
Page 1 and 2: "The Christocentrism of the Carmeli
Page 3 and 4: The Order of Carmel has its origins
Page 5 and 6: sacred scriptures and devotion to t
Page 7 and 8: This secular meaning of "in obsequi
Page 9 and 10: discover the role which the ideal C
Page 11 and 12: For la Santa, every aspect of our C
Page 13 and 14: themselves and others and will not
Page 15 and 16: describes this process of transform
Page 17 and 18: images as proximate means to union
Page 19 and 20: Crucified inwardly and outwardly wi
Page 21 and 22: own union with humanity in the Inca
Page 23 and 24: A transcendental or anthropological
Page 25: ecame human. Had there been no fall
Page 29 and 30: God's own being to a human being. T
Page 31 and 32: of every other person. The eternal
Page 33 and 34: ahistorical essence which exists fu
Page 35 and 36: above that one of the difficulties
Page 37 and 38: through the ups and downs of human
Page 39 and 40: instance of this theological princi
Page 41 and 42: Jesus' reign of God praxis, creatio
Page 43 and 44: disciples out of their means (Lk. 8
Page 45 and 46: The project of all Carmelites is to
Page 47 and 48: First suggestion: not any Jesus wil
Page 49 and 50: change it." clxxxv Hence the obsequ
Page 51 and 52: sharing of goods and life, an egali
Page 53 and 54: v. I will discuss below the meaning
Page 55 and 56: xxxii. Here I am indebted to Bruno
Page 57 and 58: lx. Interior Castle, 6.7.14, p. 150
Page 59 and 60: the Alpha and Omega, the all-embrac
Page 61 and 62: devotion mainly to the invisible ob
Page 63 and 64: cxxix. Hence for Rahner this capax
Page 65 and 66: cxlviii. See S.T., III, q. 14, art.
Page 67 and 68: only Jesus' proclamation but also h
Page 69 and 70: trans. Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll, N

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